UPDATE: It turns out the Red Sox will not wait until Thursday before making a decision about Mike Lowell. The team put Lowell on the 15-day disabled list today (retroactive to June 28) and called up Jeff Bailey.

It could have been that it was his first time back and he didn't know what to expect velocity-wise. I'd like to see the ability to pitch off his fastball more.

In addition to giving Mike Lowell an injection of Synvisc in his right hip*, the Red Sox medical staff drained 15 ccs of fluid from the area. Lowell could return to the lineup as soon as Friday, but, as Terry Francona said, "the worst-case scenario, he goes on the DL just to buy us a couple of weeks where he can get a second wind for the second part of the season."

(*: If Lowell could not play without getting this injection, wouldn't it qualify (broadly-speaking) as a performance-enhancing drug? Of course, this drug is legal and allowed by MLB. But it clearly helps the player better perform his job. And if Lowell's hitting and fielding are superior having had the injection, hasn't his performance been enhanced?) Am I totally off-base?

If I don't have a big improvement in mobility and flexibility and all of that I have to believe their going to think of something DL-wise, but if I feel really good I might play Friday. So Thursday is probably the day we chart what's going on.

Francona said that Jacoby Ellsbury could be back in the leadoff spot "in the future", but for now J.D. Drew and Dustin Pedroia "are our two best on-base guys and since Ellsbury's been hitting seventh, he's just been (doing great), and we've been playing great baseball."

There's not a player alive who wouldn't know he needed a double for the cycle in that situation. I was trying to hit a double. [And how do you do that?] I don't know ... I was just going to hit the ball and run straight to second.

Jonathan Papelbon recorded his 132nd save last night, tying Bob Stanley for the Red Sox's all-time mark. Bot again expressed his awe for Mariano Rivera and his latest milestone:

A (four)-out save for 500 is pretty neat. And an RBI. That's the icing on the cake. Just seeing what Mo did is absolutely incredible. ... He's "The Godfather" of our role ... You're talking about a guy who has 500 saves and has been through countless postseasons. When you're just aching day in and day out -- I don't know, man. ...

Steve Buckley notes that "when Rivera was Papelbon's age, he had 84 career saves". That was 11 years ago. Can Papelbon still be closing games in 2020, at age 39?

Jason Bay is 1-for-13 in his past three games.

Orioles starter Hill has been highly erratic this season and hasn't completed five innings in four of his last six starts.

444 comments:

Would Synvisc help a normal, healthy player improve his game? If it would, then I agree with you. But if it's an injection that helps a player specifically overcome an injury, then Synvisc is no different than Advil.

If Lowell could not play without getting this injection, wouldn't it qualify (broadly-speaking) as a performance-enhancing drug? Of course, this drug is legal and allowed by MLB. But it clearly helps the player better perform his job. And if Lowell's hitting and fielding are superior having had the injection, hasn't his performance been enhanced?) Am I totally off-base?

That was my first thought when I read about the shots. Like any sort of prohibition (not just drugs) the lines can get pretty damn blurry at times. Does MLB have a specific definition of "performance-enhancing"?

Re: Lowell's use of Synvisc. I think it is a little off-base to conflate his use of it to the use of illegal PEDs generally. It's one thing to use a legal prescription drug to return to normal functioning. It's another to use illegal and potentially harmful drugs to enhance a healthy player, thereby creating a situation in which other healthy players are competitively disadvantaged unless they use PEDs.

No doubt the line drawn is not straight, deep, or immovable over time. But I think most people see a difference here.

However, if healthy players began to use Synvisc, without being injured or having a prescription, in order to leg out throws to first, up their percentage chance of stealing second, or turn doubles into triples, then I think many would say that this is ethically problematic.

If Lowell could not play without getting this injection, wouldn't it qualify (broadly-speaking) as a performance-enhancing drug? Of course, this drug is legal and allowed by MLB. But it clearly helps the player better perform his job. And if Lowell's hitting and fielding are superior having had the injection, hasn't his performance been enhanced?) Am I totally off-base?

No more than with cortisone shots, unless it's being administered to healthy hips to achieve a sort of super-healthiness. On some level, all medical treatments allow patients to perform better than they could without the treatment.

But the drug is interfering in the (non-) function of Mike Lowell's particular joints and giving him assistance in playing.

I was going to cut the paragraph and think more about it, but then decided what the hell, put it in ... and risk sounding like an idiot.

It's one thing to use a legal prescription drug to return to normal functioning. It's another to use illegal and potentially harmful drugs to enhance a healthy player...

It may be "normal functioning", but it's not Mike Lowell's normal state of functioning. If it was, he wouldn't need the shot in the first place.

Also: One of my poorly-presented (or non-existent) points was that there is a wide range of things players do/take to help them play the game better. Some of them are legal and some are illegal. Some things that are legal in baseball are illegal in other sports or the Olympics. Why? (I need to read more about this.)

Poor pitcher for the other team, questionable one for ours means it's the day to rest some people...and put out a shitty lineup?

Here's a take on the drug question:

At first glance, Red Sock's question raises a good point. Often we hear that the advantage, even the main advantage, of steroids is that they help a player recover from injury. Isn't that what Synvic is supposedly doing for Mike Lowell?

There is a continuum among training, medication, and PEDs. All are designed to enhance performance. The question is where along that continuum we consider the substance or technique unethical.

The ethical line between a legal drug and an illegal drug doesn't have so much to do with its effects. It has to do with the harm the drug can cause and the tendency of people to be unable to stop using it despite the harm. I don't want to comment here on whether or not ethical lines commonly drawn between recreational drugs are correct or not, but steroids are illegal because a player can trade their long-term health for short-term recovery and performance enhancement. It's something like selling your soul to the Devil, and if that sounds like a joke, ask Lyle Alzado or Ken Caminiti.

Maybe Red Sock would go far enough to say that people should be able to make that choice. It's the ultimate individual rights argument: those who choose to stay "clean" should enjoy their rewards by having a healthy and long retirement, and leave those who abused themselves to gloat over their trophies in pain and discomfort.

The fact is, when society declares a drug to be harmful and addictive, it invades the individual's right to fuck himself up by making the drug illegal. So that's what baseball's doing when it outlaws steroids: protecting the greedy athlete from himself.

I couldn't quite see it, but I was wondering about that. If he clamped his hand shut w/o the ball, I could see him still holding it, even with that hit. I could imagine the ball ripping the glove right off.

last night with lester, lately with beckett, at several games in the last few weeks, it has felt like we are simply gonna roll through the year and dominate in october. it looks easy -- inevitable, as someone might put it.

flipped over to the mfy game. they were showing fruitbat walking and getting his first RBI. showed the mfy dugout and on ball 4, slappy started jumping up and down like a maniac with his arms about his head. just more "look at me behaviour".

I was just going through one of the boxes of books I got when I cleared out my storage space the other day (twice as many boxes as I thought). The Dec. 1984 issue of MAD is entitled "MAD Salutes the Jacksons" and the April '85 issue is the "Special Rock Issue" with Jackson as the first artist mentioned.

Drone River: I love it--this city, which is broke, shelled out millions of dollars to fix up this place and not only do they have to pay to get in, the best seats are only available to large corporations!

well, you're welcome to come and pick through to fill those shelves of yours.

Do I keep two boxes of SF mags from late 50s to mid 60s that my uncle gave me? I read a bunch of 'em in high school. Will I read 'em again? Do I need to keep those Kerouac novels that are not interesting editions? What about all those books from various sociology classes that I would be interested in perusing again someday?

Do I keep two boxes of SF mags from late 50s to mid 60s that my uncle gave me? I read a bunch of 'em in high school. Will I read 'em again? Do I need to keep those Kerouac novels that are not interesting editions? What about all those books from various sociology classes that I would be interested in perusing again someday?

One of the great regrets of my life .. and I mean this, is that I once had the comic in which Spiderman's girlfriend Gwen was killed by the Green Goblin........ and I threw it away!

Nick, I hear you. Do I need all those books from college? How about favorite children's books? Will my grandchildren want new editions or these old ones? What about all those faded paperbacks of books I read 5, ten, twenty years ago that I will never read again?

I just can't seem to part with them at all. Old clothes, yes. Old books...not so much.

I do have all my Beatles stuff though. BTW, my daughter got me tickets to see Paul McCartney at Fenway for my birthday. I know most of you probably are not Beatles fans, but as a child of the 60s who remembers seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan as an eleven year old girl, crying when they went off stage, Paul is still my first serious crush.

It wasn't my mum. It was *me.* Seriously, that comic would be worth thousands today. At least hundreds.Hee, hee, I have a very good friend who is still a huge Beatles fan. I promised her I would never make fun of the Beatles if she promised to never make fun of The Who...... or Primus.

Oh..I would never throw them away. question is would I regret getting rid of them? I've never had a music or book purge in my life and it is really showing.

What do I do with all these issues of Wired? I have a complete set of the first few years minus the 1st and 3rd issues (lent both away back when). I can't see ebay shipping costs being reasonable. I'll probably just offer 'em up on craigslist. someone must want them.

i was so poor in the early 80s i sold almost all my baseball cards (kept the tobacco cards from the teens) -- this was about 2 years before the market totally fucking went nuts. i had tens of thousands of cards. fml.